Navigon 20 Plus - More Extras, In Transit and Verdict

Summary

Our Score

8/10

Review Price £104.35

The final additional feature the Plus has compared to the Easy is Navigon Sightseeing, which comes in two parts. The first is a new POI category, which could be described as tourist attraction POIs on steroids. The entries have considerably more information than regular POIs, such as opening hours and pricing, giving you a bit more guidance about which ones you might want to visit.

Allied with the Sightseeing POIs are the Sightseeing Tours. These are custom routes that take you around a collection of Navigon Sightseeing POIs. There are 14 Sightseeing Tours included, but only one per country, so just a trip round the Lake District for the UK. An extra £15 will get you 100 Tours across 14 countries, which is fairly reasonable if you enjoy European driving trips, although a good guidebook would be recommended as well.

Other than these extras, the 20 Plus is essentially the same as the 20 Easy. So it offers a functional if not stunningly streamlined tabbed system for finding your destination. This functions in the same way whether you’re searching for an address or POI. With the former, you drill down from country, to city, to street, and then house number, although you can enter a full UK postcode instead of a city. With the POI system, you can move from category to subcategory, or search the whole database. However, you can’t search across both address and POI databases by keyword, a feature of Mio Navman Spirit sat-navs we find particularly useful.

In transit, the 20 Plus offers some of the latest Navigon widgets. The Active Lane Assistant builds on the Lane Assistant of previous Navigon generations by adding animation. The graphic appears on the right of the display, and covers the majority of multi-lane junctions. Its main benefit comes with complicated systems where you must be in the right lane for a series of turnings in succession. At the most significant motorway junctions, a full-screen Reality View Pro graphic pops up to tell you which lanes to be in and which road signs to look out for.

As you approach your destination, the Clever Parking system reveals an icon onscreen so you can search for nearby lots, although like the MyBest POI feature we wouldn’t recommend operating this when driving. When you’ve parked, the Last Mile function then saves your location automatically when you remove the sat-nv from external power to finish off the remainder of the journey on foot. So you will be able to find your car again on your return. The 20 Plus also makes itself easier to use whilst walking by switching to portrait orientation in pedestrian mode.

Verdict

If you’re on an occasional traveller on a budget, Navigon’s 20 Easy would still be our top recommendation, as £80 for a sat-nav with European maps and a decent set of features is hard to beat. Most of the 20 Plus' extras will be insufficient to convince you the additional £30 is worthwhile. However, regular commuters could well find the premium RDS-TMC service spins things the other way, as it makes the Plus better value than adding this capability to the Easy. So Navigon’s 20 Plus would be our suggestion for rush hour travellers on a tight budget.